'Listen with both the ear and the eye'

“Read something of interest every day - something of interest to you, not to your teacher or your best friend or your minister/rabbi/priest. Comics count. So does poetry. So do editorials in your school newspaper. Or a biography of a rock star. Or an instructional manual. Or the Bible.” – Jane Yolen

 

Born in New York City on this date in 1939, Yolen was immersed in writing, the daughter of a journalist and public relations writer.  She started her own writing in elementary school and created a “newspaper” in her Manhattan apartment building while still in junior high, a time when she also wrote a multi-page essay about New York State’s manufacturing industry – in rhyme.

 

In high school, she won a Scholastic Magazine poetry contest and edited and wrote for the school newspaper, something she continued at Smith College.  There, she also wrote a book of poetry, was president of the Press Board, and penned song lyrics for theater productions in which she was involved.   On her 21^st birthday, she sold her first book (nonfiction) about female pirates titled Pirates in Petticoats.  “After that,“ she said, “I was a book writer for good.”

Yolen has authored or edited some 400 books and short stories, her best-known being The Devil's Arithmetic, a Holocaust novella; the Nebula Award-winning short story Sister Emily's Lightship; a novelette Lost Girls; and her children’s books Owl Moon, The Emperor and the Kite, and “Commander Toad” series.   She reads everything aloud, no matter whether a novel, an essay, or a children’s picture book, and does the same when creating her own works.   

 

“I believe the eye and ear are different ‘listeners’,” she explained.  “So as writers, we have to please both.”